Hello!

Thank you for taking the time to visit my profile. I enjoy creating contemporary male portraits and sculptural male nudes with a painterly Renaissance edge. I am always looking to collaborate with male models and athletes. If my aesthetic interests you, please feel free to get in touch.

For more of my work, please visit my website or follow me on Instagram.

Warm regards,
Troy Schooneman

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The representation of the male nude in the fine arts was once viewed as the noblest of artistic endeavours. In Ancient Greece, the male physique represented a potent symbol of Greek civilization, power, and superiority. This reverence for the power of the male nude is evident in the paintings, sculptures, pottery, and other decorative arts of classical Greek culture. During the Renaissance and well into the 19th Century, the male nude was the foundation of academic art training and an important subject for many of the world’s most famous artisans.

Nevertheless, the artistic depiction of the male nude, and more particularly, the deptiction of frontal male nudity, is enduringly powerful in its ability to divide opinion – both in the art world and among the polulation at large. In fact, ever since Michelangelo first unveiled his colossal masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture, "David", in 1504, the depiction of the male nude in art has suffered a gradual decline and is seen by many, particularly religious fanatics and homophobes, as a threat to the fabric of a "moral society". Queen Victoria was so horrified at the sight of a replica of Michelangelo’s “David” when it was first unveiled at The Victoria & Albert Museum in London that she ordered David’s genitals to be covered. The sight of David's flaccid marble penis had Queen Victoria reportedly reaching for the smelling salts. A ceramic leaf, painted gold, was used to cover David's manhood during Her Majesty's subsequent vistits to the museum.

The reasons for the decline of the male nude in art since the Renaissance are numerous and complex. The rise and spread of religious fanaticism, homophobia - both generally in society and throughout the art establishment, the dominance of the "male gaze" in art, and, perhaps to a lesser extent, the development and proliferation of visual imagery (tawdry nude selfies) on the Internet and social media have all contributed to a dilution in the perceived power and artistic value that the male nude once held. It is against this backdrop, that I seek to create male portraits (both nudes and non-nudes) that are as beautiful as they are timeless. A return to the days when the artistic depiction of the male physique was considered the highest form of academic artistic expression. My hope is to make a small contribution to restoring the male nude to its rightful place in the world of fine art without resorting to the unnecessary sexualization of the men being portrayed.

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"Opulent, timeless, and emotionally evocative are just some of the adjectives used to describe the beautiful fine art photography of Australian artist Troy Schooneman. His intense, often melancholy, yet highly romantic portraits of young men from ethnically diverse backgrounds are frequently mistaken for paintings rather than contemporary fine art photographs. Schooneman’s portraits, which are influenced by many of the master painters and sculptors of the Renaissance, possess a timeless quality and are exquisitely sensual; luminous with rich, saturated colors and infused with an almost surreal painterly quality.

His portraits take us on a journey beyond mere masculine beauty and allow us a glimpse of the profound elegance created by juxtaposing the strength and physical presence of his young male subjects with the themes of vulnerability, uncertainty, and sadness - emotions that society often demands men hide from public view. Schooneman has captured this elegance with great subtlety and we are often left transfixed by the seemingly endless contradictions created by his portraits."

www.troyschooneman.com

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